The books I've read & the movies I've seen

From IMdb: “A former secretary, newly appointed as a scriptwriter for propaganda films, joins the cast and crew of a major production while the Blitz rages around them.”

I am a sucker for World War II drama. I find it a fascinating period of British history; as Germany was trying to take over Europe we basically stood up to them, told them we weren’t having it and went about putting up every thinkable defence we could. Would not happen these days unfortunately.

This movie was charming. It was cute, and in amongst all the blockbusters I’ve been watching in the cinema as of late it was a really refreshing change. There were some real laugh out loud moments in the movie which I wasn’t expecting at all. I was expecting a nice serene drama with a bit of tearjerking moments (it is set during WWII after all) but it was also unexpectedly funny in all the right places.

My husband said he found Gemma Arterton’s accent a little bit ropey, but honestly I didn’t notice that much. I thought she did really well carrying the film, and you really felt for her as the war threw everything it possibly could at her to get her down. The rest of the cast were good in their respective roles, but no British movie is complete without the legend that is Bill Nighy providing his wit and humour to the piece. his character was probably the one that had the greatest growth through the course of the movie, even if he was just there for laughs at the start.

The concept of the movie was good; it was almost a film within a film. It did feel as though the romantic sub plot was given precedence over the primary storyline of a female screenwriter just trying to find her way in places, but as a WWII period drama the movie holds itself up reasonably well. The pacing is a little slow in places, but that didn’t make the movie any less charming than it was.